


I Thought My Mind Had Burst Into Flames

by JellyDishes



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:53:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23185063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JellyDishes/pseuds/JellyDishes
Summary: Breakfast was served promptly at 7:15 every morning, and ended at 7:30. Anyone who was late arriving simply had to sit in their assigned seat and watch everyone else eat- did, in fact, have to watch them enjoy that much more, as their missed portion was distributed amongst the others. Leaving late, however, offered a slim window that looked out onto numerous possibilities.
Relationships: Grace Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	I Thought My Mind Had Burst Into Flames

Breakfast was served promptly at 7:15 every morning, and ended at 7:30. Anyone who was late arriving simply had to sit in their assigned seat and watch everyone else eat- did, in fact, have to watch them enjoy that much more, as their missed portion was distributed amongst the others.  _ Leaving _ late, however, offered a slim window that looked out onto numerous possibilities. 

Vanya made a game of it, lingering a few carefully determined set of seconds longer each day. It was breathtakingly terrifying and exciting all at once, even as she knew it was meaningless. Control was something no one in this house had, not really, no one except dad. The small pieces they managed to scrounge up were given to them, not taken, and Vanya wasn't so bored of having what few freedoms she did that she wanted them taken away. She wasn't foolish enough to think he hadn't noticed her game, because he noticed everything. The deciding factor, as it was with so much of their lives, was whether he would care. 

_ I could hold my breath for the rest of my life _ , she found herself thinking down at her spoon,  _ and no one would notice. _ In that moment, her spoon’s edge seemed to echo the delicate curve of a woman’s neck. She wanted to bend it back the way she had read about once in a stolen half hour with a book, bend and bend until it cracked like wood in the fire. None of her thoughts showed on her face, but that wasn't unusual. Not here, not in this house. Sometimes it felt like a thick down blanket had settled over their lives, and sometimes it felt like a box. 

Her box was one of a matched set, yet individual enough to fit her just as perfectly as the crisp lines of her uniform. The trouble was, though, that she never got a new box the way she got new skirts. When she grew new ideas and thoughts and feelings, the box stayed the same. It's rigid lines had grown uncomfortable, then painful, and now finally were strangling the life out of her while everyone else said how lucky she was. 

“Mom,” she said down at her spoon,” do you remember when you first came here?” 

“Of course I do,” mom said. Mom’s mouth hadn't flickered in the slightest from the one she'd turned away from her cooking, but somehow it looked strange. Tilted in the way her eyebrows weren't and never had been. Mom didn't get confused, or frustrated, or afraid. She breezed through her days like she was floating an inch off of the ground no matter how Vanya pleaded with her to change dad’s mind. To talk to him in that sweet, all too reasonable voice that made you feel silly for arguing at all. 

_ We’re all dying here, mom, _ Vanya wanted to say, but she didn't. She wanted to scream in mom’s face or shake her until that placid smile finally took on the real and nuanced concern she'd wanted all of her life. Instead, Vanya quietly stood and put her dishes in the sink while mom hummed to herself. The song was as familiar as the back of Vanya’s hand, and she hated that it was comforting. 

For a moment, the resentment simmering between Vanya’s ribs boiled up until she couldn't hear anything at all except that hum. It swallowed up the whole world, and Vanya hated all of it; she curled her hands into claws in the air. They cupped around nothing at all, around everything. 

And then she let them fall. 

“I'm going to go to my room to study,” Vanya heard herself say from far away. She didn't stay to see that Mom had an interesting expression -or lack of one- on her face. Instead, she turned and walked up the stairs. So she could be forgiven for not having seen the slightest press of a delicate hand to Mom’s throat, as if to gasp for a breath she’d never needed. The gesture was made with her back turned to the hidden surveillance camera, so that nothing and no one was aware that it had happened at all. Just one more secret in a house piled high with the hush of them. 


End file.
